Gendered relations as shifting reciprocity
This argument suggests that, despite the domain of men appearing to be oppositional to that of women, in this rite of passage, the world for the amaXhosa is neither definitive nor bound in dualistic gender categories. Rather, gendered states and relations shift within and between persons over time. If circumcision practices work to facilitate an engendering of personhood for manhood, agency, and resilience, then the same is true, within their domain, for womanhood. The transactions that secure gendered states, identity, and relatedness rely therefore on an innate propensity within most individuals to achieve a gendered disposition as a sexually mature adult. In this culture, rites of passage seek to harness and sustain this propensity for balanced, responsible, reproductive relationships where adult women and men become accountable for their conduct. I qualify my use of the term reproductive relationships by saying that this academic, more political, summation of sexual reproduction is far too bald. It fails to portray the personal intimacy in sexual desire, challenges in loving partnerships and responsible behaviour towards children and elders expected amongst African autochthons.
I want, however, in articulating what sexual responsibility means, to place it at the level of the person who chooses to engage in sexual behaviour. I would argue that circumcision practices recognise that sexual reproduction and related gendered behaviours amongst adults requires a negotiation of sexual desire, partnership, and expectation on procreation. Circumcision rites bring this to consciousness in men and women for them to make cognitive and behavioural distinctions (Bourdieu, 1984). Thereby circumcision, in a dance of reciprocity, substantiates womanhood in women who, through ritual initiation in childbirth, take part in engendering relatedness and moral fibre in this cultural world (Hudson-Weems, 1998). This is not a question of the re-invention of a gendered state of being, but draws on an instantiated, pre-contemplative sense of innate belonging and gendered experience amongst women (Ogunyemi, 1985). In the present circumstances, Nonganza’s poem remembered her son’s birth for, unlike his father, she can intimately reflect on this event. Men have a similar experience in the practice, in the cutting of their own and their son’s foreskins for re-birth. This metaphor is frequently evoked to allude to the pain being comparable to that in giving birth (Mavundla et al., 2009). Symbolically, therefore, men emulate birthing in circumcision and can thus carry their own intimate memories (Mavundla et al., 2009; Vincent 2008). Silence and pain, at crucial points in time, thereby function as central, genderbased, competitive metaphors to instantiate an isiXhosa-speaking worldview.
Fathers make men, mothers affirm womanhood
You approached.
I felt like rushing to hug and kiss you, hut I knew better ...
Cognizant as an autochthon of the meaning instantiated in circumcision in respect of gendered relations and an age-bound hierarchy, Nonganza (2006) here describes her new relationship with her son:
... you slightly raised your bowed-down head...
stole a knowing glance at me ...
...a glance that said, I am a man now’.
Quickly you cast your eyes down again ...
The making of distinctions on gendered behaviour is integral to the meter in Nonganza’s verse. It marks a conscious realignment of her behaviour to fit her son’s authoritative march. Her posture mirrors the way she, as a Xhosa woman, ordinarily responds to and communicates with other Xhosa men. Poignantly, her poem expresses their newly learnt capacity to cope with and display composure around remembered pain; for him in circumcision, for her in giving birth. Her obligation is to affirm his manhood in a manner that is qualitatively different from how they expressed intimacy in the past. Although she senses her son’s pain, she withholds empathy by not voicing her feelings; her regret is about what she would have done ... previously. Consequently, Nonganza speaks to these culturally inscribed silences around pain. Her posture and response stand, too, as a reminder to her son that he must conform to the taboo for it is his wounding that has brought him to be the son of his mother (Ntantala, 1993).
In her adept use of image and symbol, Nonganza juxtaposes mother and son, women with men. This moment, in the new men’s march home, clearly accentuates gendered differences for reproductive choice. As features such as behaviour have definitively changed, they respond differently to their mothers. Metaphorically, Nonganza reflects on wanting to kiss him and her emotive and naive intimacy. Its sensuality is now inappropriate. Thus, gendered characteristics are shown as innate and equally mutable. The mutable is defined by a practice that pulls sexuality and desire into distinctively crafted reproductive domains. This acknowledges the paradox in gendered assignations: simultaneously innate, yet culturally inscribed, gender fluctuates from within and without and over time. The insubstantial and mutable becomes the distinctive and categorical.
Gasa places circumcision in Africa as centrifugal in substantiating the definition of gendered and sexual orientation. She emphasises that if women suffer with gender inequality, so too do men. The stigma differs, but inferiority, sometimes by association with a womanly domain, can be inferred. Importantly, resilience in womanhood and manhood, manifests when women marry circumcised men. She poses:
Why is it (circumcision) held so dear? As a girl it is a question of “I with boys” but a woman goes with a man who is circumcised. This is psychological and sexual resilience and is part of identity. Women talk about psychological and sexual partners. Across the continent is a range of sexuality and issues and sociality and women may be seen as inferior and unequal. Men who do not go are treated as dogs or badly. Being circumcised in hospital does not have the same place as being cut in a ceremony because the hospital is outside the ground.
Engendering through circumcision, Gasa confirms works reciprocally over time to establish gender-based roles, attitudes, and assignations. This is gender orientation in the making, in intimate spaces between family and peers, throughout a lifetime and across a now more disparate amaXhosa cultural landscape.
In referring to the denigration of women and boys in circumcision, Gasa highlights a relationship between what is mutable in engendering and personal character. It is important, however, to distinguish between the derogatory slurs in circumcision, and the stigma of ‘not being circumcised’ or married to an uncircumcised Xhosa man. Ntombana describes the terrible shame of a youth ‘not taken’ for circumcision. He states, “Expressions such as ‘inkwekwe yinja’ (the boy is a dog)” are “heard in Xhosa communities (to) imply that anyone who is not circumcised is not regarded as a human being in the community” (Ntombana, 2011, p. 635). Baderoon (2017) refers to Ndebele to describe an historical propensity in South Africa of denigrating people by likening them to dogs and this carries with it “a burden of violence” (Ndebele, 2006, as cited in Baderoon, 2017, p. 353). Ndebele reasons, “Likeness ... is not a safe distance, not a nearness that is not quite being. In fact, in his shift from the violence of ‘like a dog’ to the promise of ‘not a dog’, likeness is at its heart an accusation of being” (Ndebele, 2006, as cited in Baderoon, 2017, p. 357).
This shaming without, differs from the derogatory metaphor employed within the circumcision ground. Van Gennep (1960) argues that ritual is about role reversal; the denigration of the sacred for the elevation of the profane. This argues that a ritual denigration of women and boys in seclusion differs, as this ritualistically and emotively instantiates masculine behaviour (Vivian, 2011). In seclusion, what is ‘right’ versus ‘wrongdoing’ becomes arbitrary; laws become variable and do not conform to old norms and values; initiates’ wrongdoing, even criminal acts are forgotten. Hence, derogatory behaviour only becomes disrespectful when the ritual ends; then it is wrong to be disrespectful to one’s mother or women. Ritual inversion, when guided by mentors, means that a man must embody a respectful, gender-sensitive way of being with women and his elders (Mavundla et al., 2009). Integral to this, is how earlier role modelling has inevitably influenced his future behaviour. This means that although a new man adopts manly behaviour, his character and attitude influences his actions towards women.
